Early next year, Fucked Up will hit the road with Matador labelmate Kurt Vile. And they've got a slew of new music in the works, including split releases with punk vets NOFX and garage rockers King Khan and BBQ, as well as a collaboration with GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan.

But the most ambitious Fucked Up project in the works is an all-star indie rock cover of the classically cheesy 1984 holiday jam "Do They Know It's Christmas?". The single, set to be released on iTunes any day now and vinyl early next year, will serve as a benefit for several organizations that support the search for missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada-- a perfect fusion of tongue-in-cheek concept and serious cause. Contributors to the Fucked Up "Do They Know It's Christmas?" include members of Vampire Weekend, TV on the Radio, Broken Social Scene, and No Age.

We recently spoke with frontman Damian Abraham, aka Pink Eyes, as the band was gearing up for a show in Austria.

Pitchfork: Tell me about this "Do They Know It's Christmas?" cover you guys are working on. It sounds like a pretty ambitious project.

Damian Abraham: Yeah. We had planned on doing another benefit record, because we had done a benefit record a couple of years ago, and we really enjoyed that experience. We planned on doing another one on a lot smaller scale than this has turned out to be. And then we won the Polaris Prize in the midst of planning this, and all of a sudden we were sprung to address the nation. I opened my mouth, and out came this really ambitious plan to do this benefit record. It just went from there, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger and more unruly, into the monster that it is today... But let me tell you that I have seen the best and the worst of the music industry working on this record.

Pitchfork: What's the worst?

DA: The worst is just dealing with people's managements. I'm not saying all of the artists' managements that we dealt with, but certainly some of the managements of the people we were trying to get proved to be inhospitable, to say the least. It became almost apparent that the management-- like, I don't even know how much the artist actually heard about it, but management would just be like, "Yeah, they don't really have the time to do this." And I'm like, "It will literally take two minutes." I was recording most of it myself by hand, with this little hand held recorder, and if I can figure out how to do it in two minutes, anyone can figure out how to do it in two minutes.

Pitchfork: Yeah, I saw footage of you doing that with Ezra from Vampire Weekend, and it definitely looked like a pretty easy thing to get somebody to do.

DA: Definitely. We were going to put it all together in the studio, so we just needed them to literally say the lines into the microphone to the music. They could have done it on their computers at home. I don't want to say anyone's name because I don't know how much of it actually got to them or if it was just their management standing in our way, but there were certainly people along the way that we wanted to get but couldn't because of time constraints on their end. But I'm really, really happy with how it turned out. I'm actually still in shock at how it turned out. When we originally decided to do it, I was like, "I don't care how it sounds; it will still be funny." It actually sounds pretty good. And let me say, David Cross has one of the best voices I've heard of anyone.

Pitchfork: Really?

DA: Oh, yeah. I always knew from "Mr. Show" that he had a pretty good voice, but he holds it down. He does the Bono part. He and Kevin Drew both wanted it, and we had a sing-off, more or less. We had to give it to David Cross because he just had the power.

Pitchfork: How did Kevin Drew feel about that?

DA: I don't think he knows yet. He'll be reading about it on Pitchfork. He was a good sport about the whole thing. Everyone who did it was such a good sport, and so accommodating. It was almost like that video from the original version of the song, where everybody's smiling and happy. Except Paul Weller doesn't seem to smile at all in that video. He just stands there and mean-mugs in his trench coat, so maybe he was miserable that he didn't get a solo line. But yeah, we're making all these people go above and beyond to record this thing, and they all came through. We're going to do another version, actually, for the vinyl version. That's going to come out in February.

Pitchfork: Are you rounding up another mob of people for that one?

DA: There's a bunch of people that submitted late. It came down to the wire. So we're going to use their tracks for the version we're going to do on the vinyl version. I feel so bad about not using some of the people. It'd be kind of cool to have two different versions of it floating around.

Pitchfork: Who all is on the version coming out digitally?

DA: It starts off with Ezra from Vampire Weekend, then it goes to Bob Mould, and then Tegan and Sara. And then, I believe it's Kyp [Malone] from TV on the Radio next, and then Yo La Tengo. All of them are on it, but Georgia only sings on the chorus. And then there's Kevin Drew, David Cross, Andrew WK, and GZA.

Pitchfork: Does GZA sing?

DA: [Laughs] GZA was pretty drunk when I recorded the part. Of the 30 minutes I recorded of GZA, I got one really usable line. So, no. He cut into his vacation time to record it, so I'm very appreciative of what he did. One day, hopefully we'll release a B-side compilation of the GZA outtakes because they are pretty funny.

Pitchfork: Does he do the David Bowie part, then?

DA: [Laughs] Exactly, more or less. He does the parts that will be left for future remixes.

Pitchfork: Who is going to be on the vinyl version?

DA: No Age. Jarvis Cocker, hopefully. And a couple other people that we're still waiting on. I don't want to talk about people that don't end up submitting, but there's going to be some big surprises on the other one. Time became our enemy because we we really wanted to have it out at Christmas because it's such a classic, cheesy holiday song. We thought that would be a great time because people will be buying holiday songs, hopefully, on iTunes, and we'd be able to generate more money for the charities involved. But at the same time, we really came up against the deadline. Trying to get this out in time for the holidays proved to be quite a little undertaking.

DA: Yeah, absolutely. I remember listening to it at holiday time. I think Bob Geldof gets a real bad rap; his heart was definitely in the right place. And when Midge Ure and Bob Geldof wrote this, they were trying their best to bring about a positive change. We're hopefully doing that, too, with this record. I'm not foolhardy enough to think we're going to change anything, but hopefully we can get the money to these organizations that are bringing about real change within Canada.

There's actually a universal component to what's going on within Canada, too. Anywhere there's a post-colonial presence, this is happening. It could be the southern United States right along the Mexican border; it could be in Australia. This stuff is really going on. This is specifically about Canada, but I think it does relate worldwide. And because this song is about colonial powers coming to save the third world, I think there is an irony to us using this song in this case. It's kind of like colonial powers really fucked up the people within the first world, the indigenous people.

Pitchfork: It's funny, too. The lyrics are kind of weirdly condescending, but it is a heartening song.

DA: The lyrics can be interpreted as being really offensive. But I think ultimately they're really trying. It's the sound of people trying. Bob Geldof did affect change and he did raise money. So yeah, there are some people who refused to do the record on the basis of the lyrics. But hopefully the tongue-in-cheek nature of why we're doing this, why we chose this song, comes across. I think it's a great song, too. It's definitely better than the American one or the Canadian one. Canada did one, too.
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Pitchfork:__ Canada did a "Do They Know It's Christmas?"?

DA: Yeah. You know the American one is "Feed the World"? I forget the name of the Canadian one, but it was done by the Northern Lights, featuring people like Tom Cochrane and Bryan Adams. [It's called "Tears Are Not Enough" -- Ed.] It's terrible. You're not missing much by not listening to it. But there is a Canadian one. I'm sure there's one from every country. I think ["Do They Know It's Christmas?"] is the best out of all of them. It's definitely a classic song with a great refrain. It sounds really good. Everybody's voices seem to strangely work well together, which wasn't something initially planned. I was just kind of hoping it'd be a fun novelty song. Little did I know that it actually might turn out to be probably the greatest song ever recorded by anyone. No, I'm just kidding! [Laughs] It's definitely not the greatest song recorded by anyone. Most of it was recorded by me, and I'm very technically deficient in every aspect of recording.

Pitchfork: Are you working on any other new music?

DA: Yeah, we're just starting. We wrote two new songs just before we left for this tour, and we're working on "The Year of the Ox" 12" right now. And a couple splits, one with NOFX and one with King Khan and BBQ. And we're recording some instrumentals for the GZA. We're getting back into it; we're trying to find our studio legs again, as pretentious as that sounds. That sounds really pretentious when I say it out loud. It's almost like you become two different bands. There's the touring band and the band that writes and records music. We've been the touring band for so long now that it's going to be good to finally sit down and become the band that writes and records music.

Pitchfork: It's interesting that you are working with NOFX. I always wondered if [NOFX's 18-minute 1999 song] "The Decline" was kind of the precursor for all these "Year Of" songs that you do.

DA: Mike [Haliechuk], our guitarist, would be horribly offended to hear that, but I think it definitely is. I 100% agree. To me, that was the first punk song that really broke the time limit barrier. As far as a long song with one major theme, it has definitely been a huge influence on my involvement on these "Years Of" records. Mike would probably say we're influenced by the works of John Cage and some famous techno dude. But for me it's NOFX 100%.

Pitchfork: All of the "Years Of" songs aren't on Couple Tracks.

DA: Yeah, because they're individual things. It's a separate endeavor to record those things. Couple Tracks is all songs, and I think the "Year Of"s are almost... It really took me by surprise that people liked "Year of the Pig". I never expected anyone to like those records. I thought we were doing them just because we wanted to try them in the studio and try and see if we could make those types of records. It really took me by surprise that people responded to them. So Couple Tracks works as a collection of actual songs, where the "Years Of" are a separate beast entirely. Maybe we'll do a giant box set one day of "Year Of" when we've completed the entire Chinese Zodiac. Even after we're broken up, we're going to have to get back together every year to work on a new Chinese Zodiac. I'm really looking forward to "Year of the Goat". [Laughs] How are we going to make "Year of the Goat" into a record?__
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